Now the council and mayor are considering granting themselves hefty pay raises. They voted 4-3 in favor of the raises Oct. 18. A final vote is set for Nov. 1.

But before we take umbrage at the appearance of a broken promise, let’s consider the process.

The city’s charter spells out procedures pertaining to council and mayoral pay.

Every four years, it says, a “Blue Ribbon” committee will meet to consider compensation and benefits for the city’s elected ranks.

The committee makes recommendations to the council, which then votes. This year, the committee recommended salaries for council members of $40,000, a 70 percent increase, and $50,000 for the mayor, a 67 percent increase.

According to the charter, the pay increases, if approved, would take effect the first day after the next municipal election. The next such election will be Feb. 6, 2018. Three council seats will be on that ballot, meaning the candidates will be effectively applying for the jobs at the new pay level. Of that group, only Linda Penniman is seeking re-election. The other two, Doug Finlay and Sam Saad, are leaving the council due to term limits.

But three others, Reg Buxton, Michelle McLeod and Ellen Seigel, as well as Mayor Bill Barnett, won’t appear on the ballot. They won their seats in 2016. In effect, if they agree to the new pay schedule, they’ll be giving themselves a raise without voters having a say. At the first reading of the pay increase, Barnett, Buxton, McLeod and Saad supported it, while Finlay, Seigel and Penniman opposed it.

It would be wrong to suggest the pay for elected office can never go up. Over time, inflation will necessitate raises. The demands of the job might change as the community grows, or there could be a philosophical shift in which a community decides it wants to attract candidates other than those that are financially set.

Arguments can be made for and against the steep increases on the table now.

But what rankles many people in the present circumstance is the idea that you can run for a position at one salary level, then vote to increase your own pay.

There might be a solution beyond simply saying no to the raise and leaving council pay stuck where it is for another four years or, in the alternative, agreeing to it and enduring the enmity of voters.

In an Oct. 20 email to City Manager Bill Moss, Penniman suggested that the pay raise be put on the February ballot as a referendum question. That way, voters could weigh in directly. She said she will bring the idea to her colleagues Nov. 1.

She said she has gotten mostly negative feedback on the raise.

“It’s been fairly acrimonious against the raise,” she said.

Or, a different sort of referendum could hold the solution. Since the pay increase procedure is spelled out in the city charter, it could be amended through a referendum.

Instead of the pay raise becoming effective for all seven elected officials after the next election, the increase could be phased in, with those on the ballot getting the raise as soon as they are elected or re-elected and the others not getting it until two years later, after they have faced voters again.

While some might argue a fundamental unfairness — one council member being paid more than another for doing the same job — no council member would be working for less than the amount he or she agreed to when running for office. Council members’ compact is with the voters, not with each other.

Because of how the charter is worded, today’s council faces a difficult decision: Grant itself a raise that has the appearance of a conflict of interest or forgo the pay increase and leave salaries stuck at what its Blue Ribbon committee thinks is an unreasonably low level.

A phased approach is a way for politicians to keep the implicit promise they made when they took the oath of office.

Connect with Brent Batten at brent.batten@naplesnews.com, on Twitter @NDN_BrentBatten and at facebook.com/ndnbrentbatten.

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